Throughout the last few decades, diseases that spill over from animals to humans have been on the rise. What’s behind their increase, and can we do anything to combat these dangerous foes? Join scientists as they investigate the rise of spillover viruses like Zika, Ebola and Nipah, and learn...

What determines how many species live in a given place? Or how many individuals live in a given habitat? Answers to these basic questions eluded ecologists in the early 1960s. It took bold experiments by Robert Paine and James Estes to establish the importance of keystone species in regulating...

Alzheimer's disease strikes at the core of what makes us human: our capacity to think, to love and to remember. The cause of Alzheimer’s and whether it can be stopped is one of the greatest medical mysteries of our time. Alzheimer’s ravages the minds of over...

In The Biology of Skin Color, Penn State University anthropologist Dr. Nina Jablonski walks us through the evidence that the different shades of human skin color—from light pink to dark brown—are evolutionary adaptations to the varying intensity of ultraviolet radiation in different...

These five short films, produced in conjunction with The New York Times, bring to life five historical scientific discoveries and the people behind them: Alfred Russel Wallace and his contribution to the concept of natural selection; Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's microscope; Alfred Wegener and the...

What controls the numbers and distributions of animals in their environment? How do animals interact with other species? How do natural patterns arise in nature? These are some of the questions that generations of ecologists have been studying. In this lecture series, using the spectacular African...

It's a mystery on a global scale: five times in Earth's past, life has been nearly extinguished, the vast majority of plants and animals annihilated in a geologic instant. What triggered these dramatic events? And what might they tell us about the fate of our world? Mass Extinction: Life at...

Diseases that were largely eradicated in the United States a generation ago-including whooping cough, measles, mumps-are returning, in part because nervous parents are skipping their children's shots. Vaccines—Calling the Shots takes viewers around the world to track epidemics, explore...

Ten thousand years ago, corn didn’t exist anywhere in the world, and until recently scientists argued vehemently about its origins. Today the crop is consumed voraciously by us, by our livestock, and as a major part of processed foods. So where did it come from? Popped Secret: The Mysterious Origin...

Stunning fossil finds have recently revealed the fascinating stories of evolution’s greatest transitions – from fish that gained the land, to reptiles that took to the air, and primates that walked on two legs.
The Great Transitions film trilogy features leading evolutionary paleontologists –...

Three leading scientists describe the state of biodiversity on our planet and how to face the great challenges that lie ahead.
Anthony D. Barnosky, PhD
University of California, Berkeley
Is Earth on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction? As a paleobiologist, Dr. Barnosky studies the fossil record...

Growing up near Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, Tonga Torcida has dreamt of becoming a tour guide at the park. But when he meets and gets to work with ant biologist E.O. Wilson in the park, his views of the world around him—and of his future—drastically change. Torcida decides to pursue a...

Have you ever wondered why the human body looks the way it does? Why we walk on two legs instead of four? Why we can see in color but have a lousy sense of smell?
Your Inner Fish delves deep into the past to answer questions like these. The three-part series reveals a startling truth: Hidden within...

Sixty years after Watson and Crick revealed the structure of the DNA double helix and only a decade after scientists published the first complete sequence of the human genome, the ability to routinely sequence and analyze individual genomes is revolutionizing the practice of medicine.
In the 2013...

Our planet has millions of species, including thousands of mammals, fish, birds, and reptiles, and even more butterflies, beetles, and other animals, each adapted to one of an enormous variety of habitats. The richness and diversity of life raises two of the most profound questions in biology: How...

James Watson and Francis Crick collected and interpreted key evidence to determine that DNA molecules take the shape of a twisted ladder—a double helix. The film presents the challenges, false starts, and eventual success of their bold chase, culminating in the classic 1953 publication in...

This series of five short films features unforgettable examples of the evolutionary process in action. Produced by award-winning filmmakers, each film is an adventure of discovery. From the postglacial lakes in southern Alaska to the highlands of East Africa, fascinating creatures and pioneering...

Modern humans have lived on Earth for only the past 200,000 years—not even a blink of an eye in the history of a planet that is about 4.6 billion years old. Scientists have discovered a rich fossil record of animal evolution going back more than 600 million years and a much richer one of microbial...

The disappearance of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period posed one of the greatest, long-standing scientific mysteries. This three-act film tells the story of the extraordinary detective work that solved it. Representing a rare instance with which many different scientific disciplines...

When Darwin proposed that humans evolved from a common ancestor with the great apes, he lacked fossil evidence to support his idea. One hundred and fifty years later, the evidence for human evolution is plentiful and growing, including detailed molecular genetics data, an impressive fossil record,...

Why is dengue fever becoming a worldwide health threat? What other epidemics are on the horizon? How can we detect and counter emerging infectious diseases? In four presentations, Dr. Joseph L. DeRisi and Dr. Eva Harris explain how they use both simple and sophisticated technologies to detect and...

What medical secrets do venomous snails hold? How can listening in on bacterial conversations help develop new antibiotics? In four presentations, Dr. Bonnie L. Bassler and Dr. Baldomero M. Olivera reveal how a deeper understanding of nature and biodiversity informs their research into new...

Is there any more to mind than the brain? Does experience shape the way our brain develops? When we learn something new is our brain physically altered? In four presentations, Dr. Thomas M. Jessell and Dr. Eric R. Kandel help us puzzle out how the brain is organized, how it develops, how it...

Can AIDS be cured? Why has it been so hard to develop a vaccine against HIV? How are new medicines revolutionizing AIDS treatment? In four presentations, Dr. Bruce D. Walker and Dr. Bisola O. Ojikutu explain why understanding HIV evolution is critical to fighting AIDS.
This DVD set includes...

Leading evolution educator Ken Miller discusses the controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution, presents compelling evidence for evolution and reasons why "intelligent design" is not scientific. The presentation also features Dr. Miller's responses to questions from a live audience of high...

What are embryonic stem cells? Why are they potent? How do they differ from adult stem cells? Are embryonic development and regeneration intimately connected? In four presentations, Dr. Douglas A. Melton and Dr. Nadia Rosenthal discuss how stem cells may hold the key for curing diseases and...

How has the amazing diversity of plants and animals evolved? What can fossils, butterflies, and stickleback fish tell us about the deep common ancestry of all living forms? In four presentations, Dr. Sean B. Carroll and Dr. David M. Kingsley explore how key developmental genes, natural selection,...

Scientists are unraveling the mechanisms that dictate how the brain and body regulate weight. In four presentations, Dr. Ronald M. Evans and Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman discuss what the latest advances in genetic and molecular research tell us about why some people are hefty while others are lean....

RNA can be much more than a passive transmitter of genetic information. It can also act as an enzyme that directly participates in cellular biochemistry. In four lectures, Dr. Thomas R. Cech tells the story of the discovery of RNA catalysis—research that led to his receiving the 1989 Nobel Prize in...